Skills for American CV?

[Goozombies]

Assuming I start fresh with a new captain and will be reassigning him from CV to CV as I progress up...currently on Ranger. I currently have BFT, SA, Torpedo expertise. Should I also get BoS? For third slot-high alert? For fourth, AFT and ASE? 5th should be AS.but I don't have enough points...

[1Sherman]

Forget anything related to torpedoes. With USN CVs, it is an absolute necessity that you use the air superiority loadouts simply to defend yourself. You'll be facing IJN CVs (all of whom use the fighter loadouts, no exceptions), Saipans with their stupidly OP loadouts, and even other USN CVs with fighter loadouts. If you do not use the air superiority loadout, your planes will be shredded, you will be puppy-guarded by fighters, and you will be assassinated by enemy TBs. 

[StrykerNC]

Expert Rear Gunner will help your returning bombers kill fighters that are chasing you. Better IMO then BFT. 

Torpedo Arming is a good 2 level skill, and you have to have a level 2 skill. All the other Level 2 are basically for gunships. Except maybe Fire prevention.

Then I would just wait until he is a 6, and get Dogfight or Torp Accel, depending on how often you use manual torp drops.  The extra speed is awesome for close drops.

Dogfight became less useful after the CV balancing, but, it still happens that you will get 4 carriers in a game with a 1 tier spread. Dogfight Expert will give you a slight advantage if facing the higher tier fighters.  And, if you face a Saipan with it's T9 fighters you will get a 20% boost. So, it's worth it if you are going to run the 2/0/2 Ranger loadout.

Aircraft Servicing is the Go-To level 4 skill. Demo Expert maybe if you use DBs a lot. But, it's always good to recycle your planes as fast as you can.

And, yes, Level 5 is Air Supremacy, for sure.

 

Hope this helps.

[StooperRasu]

Forget anything related to torpedoes. With USN CVs, it is an absolute necessity that you use the air superiority loadouts simply to defend yourself. You'll be facing IJN CVs (all of whom use the fighter loadouts, no exceptions), Saipans with their stupidly OP loadouts, and even other USN CVs with fighter loadouts. If you do not use the air superiority loadout, your planes will be shredded, you will be puppy-guarded by fighters, and you will be assassinated by enemy TBs. 

 

I rarely use the Fighter setup and still come out on top but I have only gotten to t6 so cant speak for higher tier matches. So for me (at least at the low end) the stock setup with everything possible to increase plane durability is key.

 

[WKMitchell]

Air Superiority Loadouts are not a must I played all the way up to the Midway on the balanced loadout even through the Lexington after it lost 1 fighter squad.  Many people play US CV's in Strike as well which you can do fine in.  The standard that I know of for Captain skills;  Your use may differ.

Tier 1 Situational Awareness

Tier 2 Torpedo Armorment Expertise (Not as useful for US as for IJN but the only even partially good skill for CV's at tier 2, also if you do decide to go AS loadout will not help you at all)

Tier 3 Torpedo Acceleration (Makes it easier to torp things with your TB's especially DD's though you will have to adjust your manual drop point as it moves a bit farther out, again not useful for AS but not a lot of the tier 3 skills are useful for CV's)

Tier 4 Aircraft Servicing Expert

Tier 5 Air Supremacy

 

There are other good skills in the tree primarily at Tier 1 like BFT, Basics of Survivability, possibly Upgraded Rear gunners though that is minimal use.

 

Also if you are looking for a competitive ship rather then just getting a US CV specifically go up the IJN line for now they have slapped the Midway with 3+ nerfs in the last while it is still a decent ship it is a lot harder to do well then the Hakuryu now.

[Goozombies]

Nice, 46 plane kills? What was the enemy doing? Parking his planes next to your CV?

[Goozombies]

High alert is useless? And so is AFT?

[StooperRasu]

Nice, 46 plane kills? What was the enemy doing? Parking his planes next to your CV?

 

TBH they was failing to remember the alt attack and just lining them up for the slaughter lol. But more or less just grab skills to make planes live longer/do more damage and effective use of the alt attack can give you some pretty big wins with stock load out and still do damage with the torpedos you get.

[Goozombies]

I just got out of a game where I sank the Saipan with his AS loadout losing all of my torp bombers in the process...but I still had most of my dive-bombers and am getting pretty good at doing manual drops. Pretty good game for me...4 ships sunk, 130k damage.

[StooperRasu]

I just got out of a game where I sank the Saipan with his AS loadout losing all of my torp bombers in the process...but I still had most of my dive-bombers and am getting pretty good at doing manual drops. Pretty good game for me...4 ships sunk, 130k damage.

 

That's pretty good then. I am still trying to get the hang of the Inde atm so rarely do to much more than 100k damage if I am not spending to much time rushing all over the map to kill the torpedo bombers being thrown at my team.

[Goozombies]

 

That's pretty good then. I am still trying to get the hang of the Inde atm so rarely do to much more than 100k damage if I am not spending to much time rushing all over the map to kill the torpedo bombers being thrown at my team.

You are running AS?

[StooperRasu]

You are running AS?

 

I run stock load out on t4-t6 because its the best mix of defending my planes and still doing worthwhile damage.

[Goozombies]

Stock isn't viable for Ranger though. Your fighter gets swamped and your single squadron of torp/dive bombers will get ripped to shreds against enemy anti-air.

[StooperRasu]

Stock isn't viable for Ranger though. Your fighter gets swamped and your single squadron of torp/dive bombers will get ripped to shreds against enemy anti-air.

 

Have yet to play at that tier so cant really speak about it but I know plenty of people who played stock all the way up to t8.

[Edgecase]

It's an oddity of the US CV line that every loadout is either undermanned, has no torpedo bombers, or has no fighters until Tier 9 (exceptions: Langley and Independence, which run out of planes instead). This is particularly relevant for talent selection, because it means that EITHER your torpedo talents or your fighters talents will be literally useless. Don't even think about taking the stock loadouts, they're garbage and you will get utterly out-muscled by any IJN configuration and either of the two overspecialized US ones. I suppose if you care much about your commander skills, you'd pick either AS or Strike and level the whole tree with only that loadout.

 

In practice, I ran AS with a Strike captain for a week on Lexington and didn't ever feel that I was losing because my planes were 10% too weak. Spoiler, it sucked for tons of other reasons instead.

 

I think in the wild, there are actually only two USN CV commander builds that have worked: the one that takes all the aircraft talents and the one that takes all the AA talents. AA might help you on Ranger if you take Strike, but Lexington and above have so much AA built into them that basically nobody even tries to kill them with aircraft anymore. The AA build is thus guaranteed to be obsolete by the time you finish leveling your commander. Similarly, the talent that compensates you for fighting higher-tier planes does literally nothing once you reach Tier X. If you're willing to pay doubloons to respec at higher tiers, then go for it. Otherwise, just take the bomber talents.

[WKMitchell]

The other issue with the AA builds is that starting at T8 you get 1 charge of Defensive Fire(I use the premium for 2 charges for 22500 credits I find it worth it) so that I can take Torpedo Acceleration instead.  High Alert and AFT are both useful situationally if you are getting attacked but so long as your team doesn't collapse you should be able to avoid getting attacked until very late into the game when the outcome is usually semi decided anyways.

 

The load outs for US CV's are pretty bad that is why I stuck with Balanced up till the very end of my T8 grind when they dropped Lexi from 2/1/1 to 1/1/1 considering I performed above average in most of CV's up through the Essex and just haven't played my Midway much yet.  It is perfectly possible to do very well with Balanced load out till T8.

[Goozombies]

Ahh, ok. Thanks for the responses guys.

[Gavroche_]

SA -> TAE -> High Alert -> ASE -> AS -> BFT

You'll want to rush Air Superiority as fast as you can, no other upgrade even comes close to its utility.

[THORN74]

for lvl 2 and lvl 4 i take the AA skills.... i find with the AA pumped up to the max a lot fewer bomber make it far enough to hit me.